In recent years, products with less consumption energy have been developed in the fields of vehicles, home electric appliances, and so on due to a need to reduce global greenhouse gas. In the field of vehicles, for example, there are a hybrid drive vehicle with a combination of a gasoline engine and a motor and a fuel-efficient vehicle such as a motor drive electric vehicle. Further, in the field of home electric appliances, there are a high-efficiency air conditioner, a refrigerator, and so on, each of which has less annual electrical usage. The technique common to these is a motor, and increasing efficiency of a motor is an important technique.
Then, in recent years, a divided iron core advantageous in terms of winding design and yield has been often employed for a stator of a motor. Normally, the divided iron core is often fixed to a case by shrink fitting, and when a compressive stress acts on an electrical steel sheet by shrink fitting, magnetic properties of the electrical steel sheet decrease. Conventionally, studies for suppressing such a decrease in magnetic properties have been conducted.
However, a conventional electrical steel sheet is likely to be affected by a compressive stress, and therefore not able to exhibit excellent magnetic properties when used for a divided iron core, for example.